The Dying Country
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: Children fear death for a reason, and Susan Ivanova is no exception.


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AUTHOR'S NOTES: Just a short, Ivanova-centric piece. I think I once meant to do more with it, but I can't remember now My and my old age, sadly. As always, I love and adore feedback. But then, you knew that already. ^_~

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The Dying Country 1/1

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

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Screaming; her scream and the scream of the ship. Black against the dark, ebony beyond comprehension, glittering and wild. She woke, or thought she woke, to find the cradle of her body empty, her baby snatched from her body by the shadows that moved when you didn't look at them.

Another scream, and small hands reaching out to soothe.

"Suzatchka." Relief.

"I'm here, Mama. It was only a dream." The little girl slips under the covers, pulls them over until both she and her mother are completely out of sight. In the shady blue light, their faces are unguarded and close together. 

"Not just a dream," Sofie murmurs, smoothing her daughter's hair. "Telepaths think strangely, so it must follow that they dream strangely as well." Her hand is cold as it closes around her daughter's, it seems as though the endless red-sunshine pills have filled her veins with ice. "You remember the rules, right?"

"I'll never tell anyone, Mama," Susan's winter-gray eyes are wide with the very real danger of the Psi Corps. It is the monster under the bed and in the closet, the thing that slinks along the hallways in those silent red-digital minutes after midnight.

The chant is like a blessing to keep away evil, "The sleepers are prison and the Corps is prison. I won't let them catch me."

A squeeze of the child's hand, one so tight it leaves the imprint of Sofie's engagement ring on her daughter's hand. She remembers the dream as she pulls the covers away and moves to open the curtains. Outside, the world is an October country, dried leaves falling and fermenting into death wine. Now Sofie flings the window' twin panes open and the cool air rushes to her as though eager to give her wings. 

{Come} calls the country just over the horizon, the one you can't get to unless you mean to go there with all your heart. Sofie hears the song and smiles, lifting her hands as if to capture it within her grasp. Yes, she remembers the dream; the ship and her screaming, the city with signs she can't read and the story someone whispered while she was with child. She knows she will have to go there soon-- to the city with undecipherable signs, in the country which we only rarely glimpse in the ripeness of autumn. 

"I love you, Susan," she collapses almost elegantly to the window-seat, opening her arms. The calling of the nether-country has made her weak-- she can hear it even over the sleepers these days. The girl-child hurries into her mother's embrace, cheek pressed to the older woman's breast so she can hear the heartbeat that is thunder in her baby dreams. Susan is young, bright like a copper penny that twists and clinks as it is thrown into the well for luck. Tugging at her pigtails and smoothing the sky blue skirt of her uniform, Susan settles into her mother's lap, waiting. She can also hear the song floating over the blank horizon, but it is only a whisper, the singular notes of a music box melody. Maybe she only hears it through her mother. Sofie begins to rock the child in her arms-- it is a strange sight, for the six-year old is already long and gangly, showing hints of the simplistically elegant woman she will become. The wind comes through the window, smelling of ran in the distance and smoke over the moon at night; it stirs their hair. "My Suzatchka. You know I don't want to leave you, right?"

Susan stills, very carefully, in her mother's arms. This is every child's fear. "I know. Don't go, Mama. You're not allowed to die, I say so!"

A small laugh. "You are not God, Susan-- you can not stop the inevitable."

"I wish I was God." Sullen eyes over frowning, childishly-pink lips, "Then I would make the Psi Corps go away."

"Well, if you ever get the position," Sofie's smile is teasing, bright so as to hide something else, "do not forget your dear mother, hmm?"

Susan's own eyes show no laughter, only sudden, fearful understanding; "Mama, are you going to rush the inevitable?"

There is no answer, just the tightening of her mother's arms. 

Somewhere, tangled, someone will be screaming.

Susan would never know just when.


End file.
